Monday, August 31, 2009

The Early Career of Martha Stewart

In August 1968 Martha Stewart got her stockbroker’s license and went to work for the firm of Perlberg, Monness, Williams and Sidel. She was 27. She appears five times in A Book of Ages. She was already very self-possessed as a high school student in Nutley, New Jersey in 1959. She went into modeling, then stockbroking, then started a catering business, and you sense she already knew where the business was going. Thirty-four years later she would be on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange, a post she was forced to resign because of the insider trading scandal which landed her in prison. But she hasn't disappeared. There is something unbreakable, if not exactly scuff-proof about the homemaking maven. Smiling, cunning, slightly icy, a perfectionist but also a touch self-ironic, which is what makes her so watchable.